where the two cultures meet

Al Italia

Leonardo de Vinci: The Mechanics of Genius is a new exhibition at the Science Museum in London. It is based on drawings sketched out by Leonardo over his lifetime, and displays 39 wooden models of his inventions, first built in Milan in 1952.
Leonardo da Vinci dedicated much of his life to dreaming up machines that mastered miracles he saw reflected in nature, from flight to breathing under water. They were often military commissions for his royal patrons.

A model of Leonardo’s aerial screw, an early version of the helicopter –

Leonardo’s ornithopter is a flying machine that evokes a bat or an eagle –

(Alessandro Nassiri/Archivio Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci/Science Museum)
The exhibition focuses on ideas from the natural world applied by engineers working at the time. An example is Leonardo’s version of a parachute –